Wait wait wait. I know what to do here.

We take the $9 mil and we pay some guys to draw a picture of what the non-existent court house could have looked like, we pay some other folks to write a report about courthouses, and then we take whatever is left over and give it to a PR firm to talk about how sad it is that the courthouse can't go there.

Then we take the land and give it to some developers to build a hotel and a couple of Starbucks and we give them a free tax credit for the next five years.

Damn, I think I need to run for city council.

If both the county courthouse and the Portland Building are beyond repair and in need of replacing, and hey, oh look, they just happen to be on adjacent blocks... do you know, Dirk, if there is any chatter of constructing a double-block complex of court rooms and public sector offices on the existing sites? Yes, it would be expensive to knock both down and replace them, but if they're structurally deficient and will inevitably get knocked down anyway, it seems to make some sense.